Best Bass to midi tracking?

[elephantgrey]

Im thinking of adding a gameboy to my board, cause who doesnt need more chiptune craziness? And maybe adding a sine and/or triangle under my bass for extra subyness (probably via my electribe). What are my options for converting my bass signal into midi these days? Am i still looking at either the boss pickup or the sonuus b2m?

[NoirBass]

This is widely considered the 'best':
[url="http://www.industrialradio.com.au/"]http://www.industrialradio.com.au/[/url]

Very expensive option though.

My experience with the B2m was not a happy one. By Boss pickup i assume you mean the Roland GK-3B which won't work as a MIDI pickup as such unless coupled with a VBass unit and even then the latency is still a problem.

It all depends how deep your pockets are or how much you can live with the latency.

In my humble opinion if you really want to add midi to your setup your better off with either a midi controller keyboard or midi foot controller (a la Geddy Lee)

You can pick up a Roland FC-200 pretty cheap 2nd hand these day and it has a 'Note' mode which could send MIDI data to an external module or software synth.

Edited April 23, 2015 by NoirBass

[elephantgrey]

Im not sure a foot controler will suit my purpose really. Im looking to trigger notes off of my electribe and/or trigger notes from a gameboy (via LSDJ or something similar + a midi interface).
Youd think with all the synth & octave pedals marketed at bassists there would be more available in the way of midi. I cant really afford to sink 1.5k into this at the moment, so i guess that ill probably end up going with a B2M then.

[NoirBass]

Good Luck!

[Owen]

B2M is ok-ish if you are happy to go up an octave and be super clean, but do not expect to plug in and be triggering of your normal lines. I am using a You Rock guitar for midi stuff. Obv not my normal bass but it means I can use basic plectrum technique and trigger interesting sounds.

[Woodinblack]

If you did want a footpedal, I have a Keith McMillen 12 step which is pretty versatile, you can even trigger python scripts of it etc.

But frankly the bass is a sh*t instrument for midi conversion. Getting any sort of latency is not that much of an option, as the strings are just too low frequency. Even when you look at the internals of the roland, which is about as good as it gets, the initial pitch estimate is terrible followed by a mass of bend info to get it to the right place.

[The Badderer]

are you running through a Laptop style rig running a DAW? What is your purpose in converting to MIDI?

[elephantgrey]

[quote name='The Badderer' timestamp='1429829496' post='2755484']
are you running through a Laptop style rig running a DAW? What is your purpose in converting to MIDI?
[/quote]
No, im planning to use the midi to trigger notes off of either my drum machine (korg lectribe esx1) or a gameboy (using a special midi adapter and a special cartage to use it as a synth)

[The Badderer]

i don't know if this actually sends MIDI messages or if it is just a controller, might be worth having a look at. You may need to look at a pedal based system if not and you aren't using a Laptop based rig.

http://lividinstruments.com/products/guitar-wing/

[pete.young]

My experience was that the i2M tracks a lot better than the B2M.

[elephantgrey]

but they dont have a midi output, id have to run a laptop just to send midi data to other devices, id rather something that could sit on my board.

[BigRedX]

As others have said, pitch to MIDI conversion is a complete non-starter for the bass guitar due to the time it takes to sense the pitch of the string and then convert it to MIDI data. The laws of physics are against you on this. On a good system like the Axon coupled with the latest version of the Roland pickup you are looking at 1 1/2 cycles as a minimum, That's 41Hz for the E on a bass which which works out at 37 ms. That's slap-back echo territory and a noticeable delay. Add onto that the time taken to convert that into MIDI and you can see why this is a dead end system for those of us wanting to drive MIDI devices from stringed instruments. A less good system like Sonuus will take even longer.

Even Tony James who is probably one of the most experienced users of pitch to MIDI for driving bass sounds doesn't use a bass, but has a MIDI guitar driving his synths transposed down an octave. Even then he has still had to train himself to play slightly ahead of the beat in order to be in time with the drums.

This means that realistically you need an instrument with a fret sensing system to work out the pitch of the notes you are playing like the Industrial Radio system. Luckily for you it's not the only option. You can still find the previous version of the technology which was licensed to Peavey in their Cyber Bass and MIDI Bass instruments. Although they have been discontinued they do turn up reasonably frequently second hand. Make sure that they include the cable and interface unit as it's useless for driving MIDI devices without them.

The Bass Gallery in London has [url=http://thebassgallery.com/bass/4-string/peavy-midi-bass.html]one for sale for £590 right now[/url].

[Owen]

I used to have Peavey Midibass - it tracked fine but was less than inspiring as an instrument!

[BigRedX]

[quote name='owen' timestamp='1430205195' post='2758795']
I used to have Peavey Midibass - it tracked fine but was less than inspiring as an instrument!
[/quote]

Of all the guitar synth systems that I have tried the Peavey one was by far the best on account of it actually working.

Like yourself I've pretty much abandoned stringed instrument as a method of controlling synths in favour of the string triggers/fret button devices. I have a Yamaha EZ-EG which is very limited in what it can do compared with the recent systems, but works perfectly well for controlling synths when I need a guitar like device rather than keyboard to get the feel I am after.

I think when the next generation of these controllers come out with expression in the fret buttons, it's going to kill off "conventional" MIDI guitars for anyone who doesn't need actual guitar generated guitar sounds.

Edited April 28, 2015 by BigRedX

[elephantgrey]

So i managed to get a cheap B2M, and it arrived today. I Stuck it near the start of my chain (after the i/o buffer and compressore) and it seams to track fine. Ive had no problems so far playing down near the nut, only times it doesnt track properly is when my playing starts to get a bit sloppy. When it does glitch, it seams to always be a note an 8ve under the intended.

From all the complaining about it i was expecting it to be a whole lot worse.

[Owen]

Glad to hear it is working for you Maybe I should have used a compressor. What bass are you using?

[elephantgrey]

Its a shine bass, dont know what model, and none of the pictures on their website look like it. It does have a bunch of top end to it though, which probably helps.